Quote:I'm a fan of doing things at the State level, but just depends on what it is and the pro's and con's.


Social security could have worked. "The payroll tax hike of 1983 generated a total of $2.7 trillion in surplus Social Security revenue. This surplus revenue was supposed to be saved and invested in marketable U.S. Treasury bonds that would be held in the trust fund until the baby boomers began to retire in about 2010. But not one dime of that money went to Social Security." - See more at: <a class="bbc_url" href='http://www.fedsmith.com/2013/10/11/ronald-reagan-and-the-great-social-security-heist/#sthash.4bFnukgj.dpuf.'>http://www.fedsmith.com/2013/10/11/ronald-reagan-and-the-great-social-security-heist/#sthash.4bFnukgj.dpuf.</a>


Now I haven't researched enough to hear the counter argument to this article, but interest to get your thoughts on it.

 

So government raised taxes and then proceeded to waste all of the money, prime example of why I'm always against giving government more money. We don't have a revenue problem we have a budget problem at the federal level.

 

The payroll tax hike in 1983 wouldn't have been a permanent solution to the Social Security deficit even if they would have kept the 2.7 trillion in treasury bonds.  The entire problem with social security is when they developed the plan they didn't ever expect the amount of beneficiaries to out weigh the amount of payers. The social security beneficiaries are not just retired individuals it also all the people on disability.

 

https://www.ssa.gov/news/press/basicfact.html 

 

when you get close to a 2-1 ratio of payers and beneficiaries one of two things happens, there's not enough funding to sustain the payments or the burned is increased on the payers. it's not a sustainable program regardless of what we do at this point, it has to be abandoned and the sooner the better. They can do something like continuing payments for people within 10 years of collecting or already collecting, then phase it out for everyone else 11 years out or more. They should return all payments collected from people that are not going to receive any benefits and make those returns non-taxable. As for disability that's not the governments responsibility, there's disability insurance if a worker really wants to be covered for that.

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